A human rights group in the People's Republic of China is expressing concern over the worsening human rights situation in the country, saying that 2014 was the worst year for human rights in China in 25 years.
According to UCANews, the Hubei-based Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch recently released an annual report that documented human rights abuses in China, detailing 2,270 cases in 2014 involving the implementation of "stability maintenance" measures against critics of the government in Beijing.
The stability maintenance system is a nationwide surveillance system employed by the government to keep watch on critics, and was upgraded to national-level policy in 2014 after premier Li Keqiang announced an increase in the system's budget to 205 billion yuan, or roughly US$33 billion.
"The stability maintenance regime is getting stricter and stricter; you could say it's getting more and more brutal, more and more inhuman," the group's founder, Liu Feiyue, said. "[Last year] was the cruellest we have [seen] since 1989."
The report described the escalation of human rights abuses committed by Chinese police in the name of "stability maintenance." These abuses included using catch-all charges like "illegal gathering," and "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," to illegally detaining a person on grounds of suspicion alone.
"Under the banner of stability maintenance, previously unusual measures like inviting targets to 'drink tea,' summoning them for questioning, surrounding and watching people's homes, following targets, issuing warnings..., enforced vacations, enforced relocation, enforced disappearances and detention in black jails and legal study centers have become normal and everyday occurrences," the report said.
Other measures included phone tapping and limiting access to media and Internet content. The report revealed that some activist groups in China had their websites "taken down" in 2014.
Liu also said that the national government disallowed people from making petitions to offices higher than the subject of the complaint, "effectively legitimis(ing) the oppression of petitioners by local governments."
"The human rights situation will get even worse, and even more brutal, in China in 2015," Liu predicted.
